


there is a field

by thimbleoflight



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: F/M, I mean kind of, and miranda still has a lot to learn, but there's cuddling so there's that, fair warning: they don't even kiss, in which the slates are a little less blank than anyone expects, soulbond AU!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 03:16:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15654648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimbleoflight/pseuds/thimbleoflight
Summary: Miranda Pryce, imprisoned and without her memories, finds that she and the Urania's other prisoner have a certain connection.





	there is a field

**Author's Note:**

> Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,  
> there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
> 
> When the soul lies down in that grass,  
> the world is too full to talk about.
> 
> —"A Great Wagon" by Rumi

Miranda, alone in her cell, noticed it like a light going out.

It had been several days since they had first woken up, several days since the rest of the crew had separated herself and the other man—supposedly, they were too dangerous to keep together, though if Miranda didn’t remember anything and he didn’t remember anything, she didn’t see how that could be the case. Douglas Eiffel was left to wander around, unsupervised, but what she and Marcus Cutter had done was bad enough that they were not given free range of the station.

Hera had explained it rather succinctly, and, if it were the case that Hera was speaking the truth—and Miranda had no reason not to believe the AI unit—their captors were being exceedingly generous, given that they had briefly held all of humanity hostage.

They were well-fed, allowed the necessities for hygiene, as much as was possible on a spaceship, anyway, and left to their own devices. They were believed, about the state of their minds, and yet everyone seemed to think that their memories could return at any moment, and thus, they could not be allowed to see or converse with one another.

She supposed she could do without that.

Commander Minkowski occasionally stopped by to chat, which made it feel less like solitary confinement, as did Douglas Eiffel—“you and Marcus are the only people on the station who  _get_  it, you know?”—and Captain Lovelace was perfectly cordial when she brought their food by. Mr. Jacobi was less so.

She supposed that was understandable.

They referred to her as Dr. Pryce. She had not asked them to do otherwise. She didn’t feel like Dr. Pryce or Miranda, so she’d accepted whatever they wanted to call her.

And she hadn’t told them about the feeling.

It was something like a light, or a warmth in her chest—something that changed in intensity, something that moved about and shifted, like something just out of her line of sight. It wasn’t a compulsion or a sensation that drew her in, but, she thought, she could have followed it, like a hound scenting a trail. It was spatial in nature, and sometimes it shifted. Sometimes it seemed to be towards the front of her cell, just beyond the wall, at other times it seemed to move about, or settle in different places. It was an awareness—

—and she noticed it, mostly, because suddenly, it was gone.

It wasn’t physical, it didn’t hurt when it was gone, but it had come to be a kind of anchor for her, and when it was gone she felt as though she had taken it for granted. It didn’t seem real, somehow, except that it was missing now. And it was real, she was sure of it. Something in her environment was no longer what it had been.

“Something’s changed,” she said to Captain Lovelace, when Lovelace dropped by with her lunch. “What’s going on?”

Lovelace tilted her head at her.

“What’s changed? Jacobi and I were working on repairs all day, and Minkowski is still recovering, but she’s up and about now at least. Eiffel is listening to the tapes.”

Miranda frowned.

“That isn’t it,” she said.

“Sorry,” said Lovelace, “that’s all I got. You know I can’t really talk about everything that’s going on, to you, right?”

Miranda nodded.

“I understand.”

“You need anything, though, let me know,” said Lovelace, and then she left. “Hera can tell me.”

Ah. Hera.

Hera had very politely told her about all of the heinous things that she’d done, let her know that she’d been doing them for roughly 50 years, and promptly not spoken to her for the rest of the time. She wondered what sort of account Marcus Cutter had gotten—if he had even gotten such a thing, Miranda couldn’t be sure—and whose had been worse.

It took her about an hour to work up the courage to do it.

“...Hera?” she asked, quietly. “Do you have a moment?”

The reply came, just long enough after she’d asked for her to wonder if Hera really was ignoring her.

“Yes, Dr. Pryce.”

“Something’s changed in the station,” she said, “but I don’t know what it is. I can just... please forgive my vagueness, but I can feel it. Can you tell me what has happened today?”

“I can tell you some of what’s been going on. You know I’ll have to report your question to Commander Minkowski?”

“That’s fine.”

She waited, for the pleasant voice, so like her own, to acknowledge this. It was tough not to picture another woman, just like herself (she had seen herself once, so far, Commander Minkowski had brought her a mirror), sitting in some sort of cockpit of the station. Hera sounded so  _real_.

But the AI unit wasn’t real, and if it had a body the body was the ship.

“O-kay,” said Hera, cautiously.

Miranda sighed.

“Captain Lovelace told you that Jacobi and her are working on repairs to the Urania’s ventilation systems, which suffered a malfunction. Your quarters were not affected, so we didn’t move you. Officer Eiffel is listening to his own tapes. Commander Minkowski is feeling better.”

“I’m glad the Commander is better,” said Miranda.

“Thank you. I will pass along your well-wishes.”

“Are the tapes helping Eiffel?” Miranda asked. There was a long, long pause. “If that’s all you can tell me—”

“It is.”

“Thank you,” said Miranda, and the speakers clicked, which meant, she had long since realized, that Hera turned them off.

She mulled that over. Not enough information, at first glance, she decided, making her way through the reconstituted stroganoff that Lovelace had brought her. But surely there was something...

She sighed.

But there wasn’t much else for her to do besides sleep, and so, she locked herself up in her rack again—the strange feeling still gone, the light still off, whatever it had been. She’d almost convinced herself that she dreamt it. After all, she couldn’t even describe it, and who knew what kind of damage had been done to her synapses? It could have just been... misfires, signals that had previously been useful and which now had nothing to signal to.

Somehow, that didn’t make it any less painful to lose.

* * *

 

“Okay,” said Jacobi, flinging open the door to her room. “You gotten comfortable here, or...?”

“Comfortable enough,” said Miranda, looking up at him.

“Too comfortable to lend a hand?”

Her heart pounded in her chest.

She hadn’t left her quarters since they’d brought her here, two weeks ago. She barely even knew the rest of the vessel. She knew... bodies. She knew computers. She wasn’t sure what she would help with.

“N-no!” she said, recognizing the question at hand. “No, I would lend a hand. I would be glad to help. What is it you would have me do?”

He shrugged.

“Mostly just hold stuff, or hammer where we ask you to.”

“You’d let me out?” she asked. “For... for repairs?”

“Well, I was against it.”

Oh. Of course.

“Did you let out—Cutter, also?” she asked.

(She’d found they disliked when she called him Marcus, though the name felt right on her tongue.)

“No,” said Jacobi. “One of you at a time, that’s what we figured. We decided you’re more dangerous, but less likely to try anything.”

She didn’t like the sound of that, but she nodded, and acquiesced to be led away from her room.

It felt strange to leave it. Not... bad, but not comfortable, either.

The ship was smaller than she’d anticipated. The halls, the doorways, the handholds, even. She nearly knocked her head against the top of the passageways, more than once. She didn’t think that she liked moving about in the ship, the way that it seemed to rock and—but that was probably just her imagination, given that there was no gravity to pull her any which way. 

The paths were also labyrinthine, or, it felt that way, perhaps, because she couldn’t recall any sort of path she’d ever encountered. Each corridor wasn’t made up of smooth panels, either—they were rough, wiry, and with handholds every few inches. Jacobi navigated it easily, but for Miranda, it was difficult. Jacobi had to slow down, in order for her to keep up. When they arrived at the small, cramped room, Lovelace and Minkowski were hard at work, piecing together bits of something small and black.

“You’re helping me,” said Jacobi. “I am going to be doing the very delicate job of repairing one of the engine casings. Remember, if we fuck this up, we fuck up the whole engine, and the thing can explode and we could all die in a depressurized cabin as our blood boils and  _we_  explode, or, we can die by fire when the oxygen ignites due to a spark.”

If she focused, there was something at the edge of her awareness, but she thought she might be imagining it. Too distant to feel real.

“So it’s very important that we get this right,” said Miranda.

“Yep.”

Getting it right, it seemed mostly meant holding things in place for Jacobi as he stared and brushed his dark sweaty hair out of his face every now and then, at a few pieces of metal plating, and tried to line them up so that they all fit on the engine, or occasionally it meant borrowing small tools from Minkowski or Lovelace. She settled in next to him, nudging her foot against the engine every now and then to keep herself in place.

“That one’s too big,” she said, trying to be helpful, and Jacobi rolled his eyes.

“Oh my god,” he said, as if she had said anything else thus far, and this was just one suggestion too many—which she hadn’t. “I know what I’m doing, okay?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, suddenly feeling annoyed with herself, and not knowing how to stop.

“Don’t give her a hard time,” said Minkowski. Jacobi, to his credit, shut up at that point.

“—Oh,” said Miranda, suddenly realizing who was missing. “Where’s Eiffel?”

“He’s resting,” said Lovelace.

“How is he?” she asked.

There was something to be said for their camaraderie, she thought, in the way that they looked at each other before answering any question that she asked.

“He’s fine,” Lovelace said. “He’s trying to remember anything he can, going through his old logs.”

“Is it... successful?” asked Miranda. Jacobi gestured for the wrench, which was hovering somewhere near Miranda’s elbow. She nudged it towards him.

“No,” said Minkowski, flatly.

“Oh.”

There was silence for a moment, as Miranda digested this.

She felt the loss of her memories, too, though not, she realized, as keenly as Eiffel would, being surrounded by people who knew him—who  _expected_  him to be the person that they’d known. She only wished that she could understand what she’d done. Apparently, even recordings of his own voice weren’t working for Eiffel. Hera had, essentially, told her the same thing—that there was nothing they could do, that her memories were gone.

But maybe that wasn’t so bad, she thought. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to remember being ready to destroy a world full of people, not if they were like the others. They didn’t _like_ her, but they had all of those thoughts of their own, and at any rate, even if they did not like her they took care of her. She had that strange, blank space in her mind, like the void outside of the ship, faint memories of facts or processes (like how to fix her eyes, or how to construct a functioning heart out of silicone and batteries) like stars in the distance.

But none of those thoughts were home. None of them her, none of them a narrative that she could put together.

* * *

 

“Minkowski says we have to spend at least a few minutes with you each day in order to avoid this being solitary confinement,” said Lovelace. “We have to spend a few minutes with Cutter, too.”

“Oh. I thought it was something like that,” said Miranda.

She sort of liked Lovelace. She’d come to look forward to Lovelace’s visits. They took place in her room, which Miranda was beginning to think that she preferred, anyway, and they were short.

Lovelace was pretty, and had a soft voice. Minkowski was sharp-toned, not maliciously but in a busy, distracted sort of way, and Douglas was... busy learning himself, in just the way that she was, but Lovelace regarded with her with a cool sort of curiosity that didn’t carry any malice.

“You think if you leave us alone, that if you aren’t kind to us, we’ll turn on you,” said Miranda, “and you’re afraid of that.”

Lovelace smiled.

“And why wouldn’t we be?”

“Well, you defeated us once before,” said Miranda. “I hear tell it happened with a sneak attack, and with our team having two more people than we do now, which is a very difficult thing to pull off.”

Lovelace shrugged.

“Let’s not talk about it, yeah?”

Miranda didn’t really  _want_  to talk about anything else, but she settled for, “Okay. What do you want to do when you go back?”

“What do you remember about Disneyland?” asked Lovelace, and Miranda had to admit that the answer was nothing.

“So,” said Lovelace. “I wanna go on rides. Like Space Mountain.”

“What kind of mountains are there in space?” asked Miranda, curiously.

Lovelace tilted her head.

“It’s not really a... mountain, so much as like, a black hole,” she said. “It’s filled with little tiny lights, like stars.”

Miranda decided not to mention that this would not be possible inside of a black hole.

“Oh,” said Miranda, “an upside-down mountain, then. What is the point?”

She wasn’t really sure that she liked that idea, quite frankly, and she tried to imagine it. Falling, endlessly, until she was crushed.

“The point is to go very fast, scream a lot, and then get off the ride and go get a turkey leg,” said Lovelace. “You know, celebrate life.”

“Sounds... nice,” said Miranda. “Is there anything sort of slower? Or maybe something where you just get to... walk through, and look at things at your own pace?”

Lovelace laughed.

“Yeah, okay, maybe you do strike me as a Tomorrowland kind of person.”

“I like the sound of that,” said Miranda.

* * *

 

The prisoners were brought out, occasionally, whenever it was thought that leaving them alone and unguarded would be more distracting for Hera than useful for the other members of the team, and today, Miranda found herself in the winding halls of the Urania, making her way to a part of the ship that she had never seen before.

“We’re working on the observatory,” said Jacobi. “Sorry. We gotta keep you in the engine room today.”

“Oh,” said Miranda, trying to figure out why Jacobi might say this as though it would be a disappointment. Miranda wasn’t sure how she felt about the observatory. She tended to catch herself trying to imagine the enormity of space between herself and the pinpricks of light in the distance, and frankly, it wasn’t a comfortable place to be, with only what amounted to glass (if... very,  _very_  reinforced glass) between herself and the void.

“And we’re going to be putting you with Cutter, at least for now,” said Jacobi, “got nowhere else to put you for today.”

Miranda felt her heart suddenly ache, as if every muscle in her chest had suddenly squeezed tight.

“Oh?” she said, quietly.

“Yep,” said Jacobi, “assuming you’re not faking us out about the memory loss thing—and fortunately for you, we have Eiffel who went through the exact same thing, according to Hera—”

He pushed open the door.

“There shouldn’t be any problem,” he finished, but Miranda was already looking past him, at the shadow of a man standing by the window, looking at the star. When the door opened, he turned to face them.

He scanned over Jacobi, and his gaze stopped at Miranda. 

“You must be Miranda, because you’re the only one in here who has never delivered me food in my cell. My erstwhile partner. Marcus Cutter, they tell me, at your service.”

He paused, and looked at her directly, as if expecting some kind of a reaction. She couldn’t think of anything to say, really. She searched his face for anything familiar, anything at all, and found nothing.

This man?  _This_  was Marcus Cutter, who struck such fear into the hearts of everyone on this station?

He was—he was  _short_ , a little bit round, even. He had a full head of thick curly hair, a week’s worth of stubble on his face, and he couldn’t have been older than 30. There was something goofy about his features, he was round-nosed and wide-eyed, and he had a wide mouth—he looked, she thought, like a toad.

Goofy, but not unpleasant. Looking closer, she thought, he had very pretty dark brown eyes.

But where he stood she  _felt_  the distance between them, she would have known him blindfolded, or in a crowd, a feeling both  _of_  her and  _outside_   _of_  her, and it took her a minute to realize that this was—

“It’s you,” he said, before she did, even though she was just about to say that herself. “The presence.”

“You feel it, too.”

It wasn’t a question. It was a goddamn answer, to a question she’d been asking herself for weeks.

She reached forward, for that place where her senses told her she also was. She let the feeling carry her, the way that a basic string-and-cup telephone might have carried a voice. He caught her hand.

“What is it?” he asked. “You must know.”

“I don’t think I’d call it a presence,” she said, though, the more she thought about it the more she understood. “It’s another sense. Like touch or taste, but closer to knowing where your own hand is with your eyes shut.”

“I see,” he said. “Yes. That sounds right. You would know, I’m sure.”

It wasn’t overwhelming, but when she knew what it was, that it was real, she couldn’t help but focus on it. He was  _real_.

He drew his hand away.

“Close your eyes,” he said, and she did, and—

“You’re moving away,” she said, feeling him grow distant, somehow, and, oh. “This isn’t—this isn’t...  _normal_ , is it?”

He laughed, and the sound of it was like nothing she’d ever heard before. She wanted to hear it again—

(Granted, Miranda had heard so very few people actually laugh, in all the time that she could remember.)

“Okay,” said Jacobi, “what the hell is going on over here?”

“It’s him,” said Miranda.

Jacobi looked back at Lovelace, who shrugged.

“When I asked you what changed, it was  _him_ ,” said Miranda, unable to keep from... smiling? Was that what this was?

“Okay,” said Lovelace. “What does that mean?”

“Like... telepathy?” asked Jacobi.

Miranda shook her head.

“I don’t know what he’s thinking, I just know where he is.”

“A very limited telepathic link, then.”

They moved their rooms next to each other again after that, at Miranda and Marcus’s request.

But what on Earth was it?

They weren’t allowed into the room with any of Miranda’s old equipment to look, even though, Miranda felt  _sure_ , she would be able to figure out how to use her old equipment to take a look into the two of them, and figure out what the connection was. But she wasn’t allowed to.

It didn’t give her any indication of his emotions, or his thoughts. As near as she could tell, it was merely an indication of position—purely practical. But the idea of installing it took her breath away. There was such a question of why that she couldn’t escape, that kept her up at night. Why had they done it? Who had they been to one another?

(The answer, it seemed, was obvious—and yet, Miranda felt as though obviousness of a conclusion did not indicate truth.)

She couldn’t ask the crew. They hadn’t known the two of them in their previous life, and the crew certainly hadn’t liked Miranda and Marcus either.

* * *

 

They must have decided that she and Marcus weren’t immediately going to blow up the ship around themselves if they were put together, and so, Miranda found herself spending more time with Marcus. She liked the way that he was chatty, and the way that he smiled a lot. He was very curious, but knew that she didn’t know very much about anything besides the ship, and so, tended to stick to questions about her.

“So, what do you like?” asked Marcus.

She stared at him, perplexed.

“I’ve been imprisoned on this ship for a month now,” she said, “I don’t know what I like.”

He smiled, and spread his hands out.

(Even now, she did not know if she couldn’t take her eyes off of him because she knew of the connection they’d shared, or if she couldn’t take her eyes off of him because he really was that...  _charismatic_. She liked his hands, they looked soft. Not like her own, which were long and squarish and usually clammy.)

“C’mon! You have to have some guesses. You’ve got a favorite part of every day, haven’t you?”

She leaned back.

“I suppose I like looking out the windows of the observatory,” she said, and he nodded. He had a way of looking comfortable in microgravity, relaxed, and while it was all Miranda had ever known she had to admit that she was  _sure_  she had been built for something else. She reached for the ground, she thought, her feet ached to know something solid, she imagined it like the mag boots, the satisfying heavy clunk and the feeling of being rooted in place.

“Yes, whenever they put me in there, I’m very fond of that, too.”

“I like the stars,” she continued, “I like whenever we’re close enough to one that we can see it up close. I wonder what the sun will look like.”

He nodded.

“And do you like any of the food packets?”

She wrinkled her nose, and he laughed, as if her reaction was delightful. (She wondered if, as of yet, anyone else had found anything even remotely delightful about her. She wondered if anyone had been delighted by her before. She somehow felt, perhaps, as though she had not been a very delightful person.)

“What about you?” she tried, not sure how to go about asking the question. “Is there anything you like?”

He sighed.

“I suppose I like our friends,” he said, lightly, as if they really  _were_  friends. “They’re sort of interesting, aren’t they? Especially that Hera.”

“I can hear you,” said Hera.

“I see,” said Miranda. “They don’t like you, do they?”

That, she also knew the answer to, and it had been a very silly question to ask of a man who had done so many terrible things that they couldn’t even be listed.

“Not very much, no,” he agreed. “Should I be bothered by that, do you think?”

He said it lightly, but he watched her face closely as he said it. She thought very carefully about it before she replied.

“I should think that they wouldn’t,” she said, “and they can’t help it. But that doesn’t mean that either of us is unlikable.”

She liked the way that his smile curved across, wide, white teeth gleaming, in response to that.

* * *

 

“Power’s out,” said Lovelace. “Get up. We’re all convening in the observatory.”

Miranda mumbled something that might have been trying to be  _good morning_ , except that it was also trying to be  _what are you doing here?_  and  _I don’t want to_ , all at once. And then she sat up.

When they turned off the lights, everything tended to look vaguely green.

“What—what do you mean, the power’s out?”

“Sorry,” said Lovelace, and she sounded like she meant it, too. “Hera’s offline and the station’s life support functions seem to be running okay but none of the things that we can control—you know, like, the lights—are responding.”

“Oh,” said Miranda. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

She shrugged.

“This used to happen a lot on the old ship. Just hope Hera’s okay.”

“Yes,” said Miranda, “we won’t be getting home, otherwise.”

“Well, and she’s my friend,” said Lovelace.

Oh, thought Miranda. Yes. That would be sad. Lovelace, Eiffel, Minkowski—even Jacobi, though they did not all say it, cared about the station’s AI unit. 

Miranda nodded, and followed Lovelace through the ship, quicker than Lovelace, which was strange, she thought. When they arrived at the observation room, she noted the wrench floating gently next to the command panel, and the way that everyone looked at her, immediately, when she entered the room.

“Whoa,” said Jacobi, “your eyes glow. Like, just a little bit. I can see where you are?”

“Fascinating,” said another voice—and this one she recognized as Marcus Cutter. “Incredible, really! Of course, why go to all the bother of building functioning prosthetic eyes if you’re not going to make them  _better?_  I’m sure you can see in these conditions.”

“You can’t?”

“We can’t,” said Marcus, but she could see the smile on his face.

Everyone was still looking at her.

“Oh,” she said, and she felt sure that there was something that she was supposed to do here, but she couldn’t think what it was. “So we’re all just going to... sit here?”

“Well, not now that we’ve got someone who can see, I hope!” said Marcus, brightly.

Ah.

“What do you want me to do?”

Minkowski bit her lip.

“Can you read any of the controls?”

Miranda pushed her way over to the control panel, settling down in the chair.

“Oh, is this it?”

Her hands settled comfortably onto the keyboard—

 _Bring up the command line_ , she thought, and her fingers did it before she even knew what keys she’d placed them on.  _Find what’s wrong_.

In the dim light, she could still make out the words on the screen, and she wondered if anyone else could. Probably, the screen lit up a little bit.

“Why can’t you do this?” she asked, a little bit puzzled. “You can see the screens.”

“I can fix the hardware,” said Minkowski, with that same slow, patient tone she tended to always use with Miranda. Miranda could never decide if she hated the condescension, or appreciated the gentleness. “But the AI functions... I’m not so good with those.”

“Oh,” said Miranda, “you just bring up the command line, and start—”

“Hey,” said Jacobi, “should we be letting her do this?”

“Well, Hera’s offline,” said Minkowski. “What choice do we have?”

“It won’t feel anything if I just look around,” said Miranda.

This, evidently, was the wrong thing to say, judging by how, in the dark, everyone’s faces immediately twisted in ugly grimaces.

Even Marcus's face changed—not fear, like the rest of them, but he went blank-faced, a little bit concerned.

“Okay,” said Minkowski.

“Hey, Dr. Pryce,” said Lovelace. “Can you just... wake Hera up? Without changing anything about her? Just... say she, when you’re talking about her. Not it.”

Maybe that was why they’d been upset. Miranda reconsidered.

“No,” said Miranda, finally. “She’s not awake. I have to go in and change something to wake her up.”

“Well, like, obviously,” said Lovelace, and Miranda could feel that she was trying not to be exasperated. “But—like—”

“I know what you mean, of course, but that isn’t how this works. Whatever change I make, is—it’s a change. To her. I can force her awake, which might cause... neuroelectrical feedback, or I can try to make her be something that would be awake.”

 _So which would you rather?_ , she thought, afraid to ask the question aloud—afraid that it would sound demanding.

“We’ll wait,” said Minkowski, finally, and Lovelace turned to her.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am,” said Minkowski. “I don’t care who she is now, Hera wouldn’t want  _her_  digging around in her head. And that’s exactly why. We’ll wait.”

“Hm,” said Marcus, who’d been quite for most of the conversation.

She could feel him at the edge of the room, a comforting presence, bobbing gently somewhere outside of the line of her sight. She didn’t have to keep an eye on him, so she focused on the others.

“I somehow doubt you have anything to say about it,” said Minkowski.

“I just wonder what will happen when we’re all freezing because the heating system—”

“Oh,” said Lovelace, “been there, done that. You can’t scare me.”

Miranda turned her head, and, out of the corner of her eye, she could see Marcus shrug.

“Suit yourself, Captain Lovelace!”

They settled in, as Eiffel began to ask Lovelace how often this had happened before. Minkowski began to talk, and the three of them, chattering along, filled the silence. Miranda sat, with Cutter, on the other end of the room.

“Should’ve told them that you were just going to wake her up,” said Marcus, pleasantly. “No fuss. Bringing a human back to consciousness isn’t a painless process, either, but you scared them.”

“Oh?” she said.

She turned to look at him, and, though his eyes were unfocused, he turned to face her. He was a little bit off—she thought he might be going on the sound of her voice, but he gave her a wide smile.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, “you were honest, which is what they  _thought_  they wanted from you. But they really wanted their friend awake again.”

“Hm,” she said. “I suppose you think that I handled it poorly, then.”

He shrugged.

“I would have asked you to do it the first way. Not to change her, but just to... wake her up. Seems to me that changing anything about her should be a last resort, right?”

Miranda felt ill.

“That’s not the point,” she said.

“That’s going to have to be the point, if we’re going to get along with them,” he said. “Neuroelectrical feedback, that’s  _pain_ , right?”

She sighed.

“Close... enough.”

If any of the others had said it, she would have said no, a small, contrary part of her refusing to admit that any sort of simile or metaphor between herself and the AI unit in front of her was valuable or worthwhile. It had nothing to do with personhood, and everything to do with usefulness—pain was  _pain_ , pain had an emotional component to it, an instinctive reaction, and neuroelectrical feedback wasn’t something that happened to humans. The AI unit could work through pain, in a way that a human couldn’t, and yet...

The metaphor was there. He was right.

“The other option was rewiring her. So, you were saying, do you want me to shake your friend awake, or do you want me to rewire her until whatever knocked her out doesn’t do that any more?”

She folded her arms.

“In a sense.”

“Captain Lovelace,” said Marcus, and she started, as did Lovelace, across the room, “Dr. Pryce and I have been working out a solution. She can do the techie equivalent of some smelling salts. How’s that? Hera’s not gonna like it, but she’s not gonna dislike it any more than anyone dislikes an alarm clock.”

There was a long, long pause. Lovelace looked back to Minkowski, who drew in a deep breath, both visible and audible to Miranda.

“Smelling salts it is,” said Lovelace, and only Miranda could see Marcus's smile.

Five minutes later, the AI was online. The lights came on, the heating came on.

“—Did I go somewhere?”

Miranda didn’t expect herself to be lauded as a hero, but when the AI did reassure her friends that she felt no different at all, and that she didn’t really like Miranda messing around in her head but it was better than the rest of them dying, she supposed, the warm smiles that the others gave her weren’t... the worst thing that had ever happened.

* * *

 

But her dreams that night were fitful, they were of the room that she was trapped in or of the true darkness of shutting her eyes—there was no other such thing as darkness, to her, no matter whether or not they turned off the lights, and she flipped back and forth between the two with no sense of rhythm.

And there were people watching her, she knew it, though she could not see them, she was under surveillance.

She woke, finally, to a knock at the door of her room. At this hour? What on earth could they want? Floating over, she peeked out to see—

“Marcus,” she said, and opened the door.

“Evening, Miranda,” he said, and she moved aside so he could enter the room. “Sleep well?”

“No,” she said. “You?”

“No,” he said. “I could tell something was wrong, you were jerking around in your sleep.”

“I apologize for waking you.”

He shrugged.

“It’s fine. What do you suppose this connection is for, if not something like that?”

She had no answer to that.

“Anyway,” he continued, “I thought you might like some company, and after talking it over for a moment, Hera agreed and let me out. She said that it was the least she could do, after earlier.”

Miranda considered that. The AI felt gratitude, and empathy. It— _she_ —was not so unlike her friends, in that.

“Sorry to wake you.”

“No one I’d rather be woken by,” he said, genially, and settled in. “Do you? Want company, that is?”

“If you don’t mind,” she admitted, and he smiled.

“Then I’ll join you. Want to tell me about it?”

She shook her head.

“Then shall we talk of something else?”

“Sure,” she said. “Marcus, do  _you_  dream?”

He tilted his head, considering the question.

“I suppose you could call it that,” he said, and, she thought, she liked the way that his face moved when he spoke. His lips looked soft, there was a roundness to his cheeks—echoed in the curls of his hair. “I don’t think I dream of anything very exciting, though. I think I just dream of my room, and of moving through the station. Sometimes I dream about what it would be like to go on space walks, but I don’t think I’m remembering anything. I think I just like the idea of it. I think about it a lot, you know.”

“Mhm,” she said.

She supposed her heart rate had been fast before, her hands clammy, and now she only knew these things because they were no longer true. Marcus’s voice slowed her down, it let her think about something else, and she really could picture him on a spacewalk, now that he spoke about it. He would float gently, or perhaps walk along the side with the mag boots, and look out at the stars, with awe visible on his face through the helmet.

It was a pleasing thought—she wanted it for him, even if she did not want it herself.

And she wanted a dream like that, too, of her own, she wanted to dream of what Earth might be like, perhaps. Of oceans and mountains and grass, all concepts that she remembered, though she suspected that she was remembering pictures and not places she’d been. Perhaps it might be better to be placed in a vast expanse, if she wasn’t so afraid that she was going to drift off and be lost in it.

He reached out for her, and she, to her own surprise, reached back, until their hands met.

“Not enough,” she said, surprising even herself, and he drew her closer, until she was folded in his arms. She was taller than he was, but that didn’t matter in microgravity, she could be held against his chest and she could let him surround her, rest her head against his shoulder, with her feet hanging off to the side. He anchored her.

She shut her eyes again.

“Comfortable?” he asked, and she felt it next to her head, the place where she listened for him, which connected her to him, a wire that could not be broken. She flattened her hand against his chest, and felt his heart beat.

She nodded.

“You’re cozy,” he agreed, and Miranda liked the sound of it. She didn’t know if she felt like she was a very cozy person, and she suspected that she never really had been before. Miranda thought that she might like to be, the way that he said it.

* * *

 

She woke up the next morning, again to a knock at the door, but this time in Marcus’s arms. She’d fallen asleep there, and when she stirred, he did, too.

“‘Morning, Miranda,” he said, and she pushed him aside, more out of surprise than anything else, and then instantly regretted it.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning,” said Hera. “Okay, so, I  _think_  I’m experiencing mortification for the first time, but, Captain Lovelace is outside the door right now and she would like to be let in, and I have to tell her that you’re both together, and in here, and—”

“Thank you,” said Miranda. “You can let her in.”

The door swung open.

“Dr. Pry—” Lovelace pushed into the room, “Cutter, I went looking for you first, but Hera said you both were in here?”

“I-I-I said it was fine,” said Hera, “Dr. Pryce was having a nightmare—”

“I was visiting Miranda,” said Marcus, pleasantly.

“I just woke up,” said Miranda, because it seemed sort of important, and Isabel looked at her.

“You wanted him in here?”

“Yes. We were—talking. He was keeping me company.”

“Well, I was on my way to tell you,” said Lovelace, “Hera let us know the situation, and we’ve had a discussion, and... for the time being, we’ve decided that it’s no longer in our best interest to be babysitting you at all times. Obviously, we’re going to restrict your access, but you will have more mobility, and—well, I suppose given the new rules... you’re free to associate with one another, however you’d like.”

“I would like,” said Miranda, and Marcus snorted, which wasn’t fair, because she hadn’t really intended for it to be funny.

“O- _kay_  then,” said Lovelace, “now, that’s settled, room service is not an option any more, so you two have to head down to the mess hall like the rest of us.”

“That’s why you did it,” said Marcus, knowingly. “You got tired of waiting on your worst enemies!”

Miranda reached for his hand, and he let her take it, which was nice.

“You bet,” said Lovelace. “Uh, okay. You know what? Come down to the mess hall whenever you want.”

Somehow, now that her senses weren’t telling her that part of her was split on separate sides of a spaceship’s dividing room panels, her prison didn’t quite feel so confining.

“In a few minutes,” said Miranda, finally, and Marcus agreed. Lovelace looked between the two of them again, nodded, and left.

She turned to Marcus again, and met those same pretty dark brown eyes.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I think I’m surprised by their kindness,” she said, finally. “What do you think?”

“I think that this,” said Marcus, placing his hand on his chest, and she realized what he meant even though they still had no name for the connection that they shared, “was because whatever we did, we meant to do it together.”

“You’re waiting for me,” she said, as the realization hit.

He nodded, and she drew in a breath, because even though this room did not feel quite so small, with him in it, there was a bigger spaceship, and a world beyond that, as soon as they got to where they were going.

“I don’t want to be who we were,” said Miranda. “I don’t want to... deserve, being locked up again.”

“No,” said Marcus, “me, neither.”

“But I want to stay with you,” said Miranda.

“On that, we are agreed,” said Marcus. “Our old selves, I think, were right about that one thing, and the rest of the shackles, I expect, we’ll have to keep learning to cast off. Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling, and pulled him out the door.


End file.
